


an axiom of mine

by anchors



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Alternate Universe - Snow White, Bees, Dog Tags, Fawnlock, Flower Crowns, Greaserlock, Multi, Post-Reichenbach, Retirementlock, Sherlock Cooking, Sherlock in Heels, When Harry Met Sally - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-03 14:12:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 7,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anchors/pseuds/anchors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important." - Sherlock Holmes, <em>A Case of Identity</em></p><p>A collection of standalone little-but-important tumblr ficlets and answered prompts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. bloom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to [this post](http://sherlock-in-heels.tumblr.com/post/58735005485/sherlock-may-publicly-scorn-sentiment-but-he-has) on the sherlock-in-heels tumblr blog.

They’re tucked in the back of his closet, behind the outdated botany volumes and the jumper that doesn’t belong to him but belongs there nonetheless. Sometimes Sherlock ventures in, into the dark, to where this rare new species shines even more brilliantly for the gloom, its small, rose-diamond pinpricks studding cobwebs like a veil.

Sometimes he thinks, these rare new thoughts.

 

 

 

It happens where else but on a case: he’s lecturing the shopkeeper for his carelessness, turning to leave impatient-eyed and impatient-gaited, when they stop him (stop his heart).

John’s sun-warm weight at his back: “Oof, Sherlock, what - ?”

 _Nothing_ , he could say.  _Nothing but the best of pairs_.

He shakes his head, wordlessly, and sweeps from the store. Keeps his eyes from straying to the silver in John’s hair.

 

 

 

The box, when it comes, is paper-trimmed with garishly red ribbon and an overlarge bow. But the shoes inside, honest white, durable, still with their improbable glow - they’re perfect.

 

 

 

Paper crinkles, loud, but no louder than the beating of his heart.

“Wear them for me?” John whispers, hands stroking up, down Sherlock’s thighs.

“Now?” he breathes, lying back.

John’s fingers catch on silver flowers as he fits the heel to Sherlock’s foot, as he kisses, “Always.”

A blush is spilling over his skin, over his hands, pale as moonflower - Sherlock in bloom.


	2. beating

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to [this post](http://imaginesherlockandjohn.tumblr.com/post/61807243307/imagine-john-giving-sherlock-his-dog-tags) on the imaginesherlockandjohn tumblr blog.

Water dripping down his chest.

 

“Next time could we not throw the important evidence in the river, hm?”

 

 _Epigastric fossa_. John doesn’t know, but it’s where his tags lie when he’s wearing them. Sherlock’s seen the thin ridge before, where the braiding edges under his neckline and disappears beneath his shirts.

 

In the right light, if John’s shirt is very thin, you can see where John’s identity hangs, slung low into that soft depression above softer, rounder skin.

 

John isn’t wearing them now.

 

“Anytime you want to give my shirt back.” He stands, almost naked, shivering with his arms clutched over his front on the banks of the Thames.

 

Sherlock fumbles with the clothing John had shoved at him. Returns it hastily.

 

Most of it.

 

John’s tightening his belt when he seems to notice the silver-glint in Sherlock’s hand, in Sherlock’s eyes.

 

There’s a drought in his voice when Sherlock says, “You don’t need these anymore.”

 

“And why not?” Sherlock wonders if John can hear the desert in his.

 

John casts about for more clothing, but there’s nothing more to put on. Sherlock waits until John meets his gaze, open, Thames-blue and fathoms deeper. Then his eyes drop to the small, swinging circles.

 

“I know who you are.”  
  


After, John lets Sherlock keep them. Just by his heart and its beating.


	3. beginnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [hexetal](http://hexetal.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _stomach kisses, joanlock_

One by one, her bees emerge.

The magnifier illuminates twitching antennae, dawn caught on moist, branched hairs. New eyes glint, though not as brightly as new wings - delicate, translucent as the fog-haze of cities still sleeping.

She’d asked him, once, with New York spilling through the dark below: “Aren’t they supposed to be dying?”

He’d sounded far away when he answered. She knew better, now, why he’d always seemed to be wading through very different oceans. “Isn’t everything?”

It was too much for one man to hold, cupped in his hands. Seeping out all the cracks.

The last bee struggled through ages ago. Joan gives a start and stands. Sherlock remains sitting, but he looks up (never looks away). The smile he gives her is a watery, wavering line.

She puts a hand on his shoulder and smiles back. Smiles like the sun.  _Thank you_ , she wants to say, but the words drown in her throat. Because Sherlock is leaning forward like a man collapsing onto dry land after years at sea, and he’s pressing his face to her stomach, and it might just be the ebb and flow of his breath but she can feel his lips just there, just resting. She stays.

The sun rises over the Atlantic. It glitters, white upon the blue. They are buzzing with beginnings.


	4. hive-heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [anotherwellkeptsecret](http://anotherwellkeptsecret.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _OTP kisses. Because those always make me feel better._

Holmes never says it aloud, but _I’m worried for the winter_ lingers in the anxious touches he skims across the hives, shadows him as the evenings lengthen and the walks he takes over the winding Sussex wilderness earn him the reputation of a ghost, the pale-grey ghost who wanders, wonders, windswept and ash.

Once, Watson sets out through the snow, follows the pipesmoke and finds him shivering on the ground, the flakes in his hair and on his eyelashes, melting down his cheeks: _what if, what if, what if_.

 _Oh, dear fellow_ , Watson sighs, unfolding the blankets he’s brought and wrapping them both tight for the waiting, as he presses a kiss to each cheek bitten to bone by the cold and the age, _we do not theorize ahead of the facts, but I know for a fact that spring will come - it will, it will_ , and Holmes blooms like the heatcluster at the hive-heart, like the future spirit of a spring.


	5. wild thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [wiggleofjudas](http://wiggleofjudas.tumblr.com/)' prompt: _fawnlock, because, well, i have a fever and the only cure is more fawnlock._

“Come out,” John calls from the creaking porch steps with the gun in his hand, the years,  _two years_ , in the line of his shoulders heavy as bonerack undropped, that look in his eyes that says  _I am now a thing grown wild_.

Christmas and snows in the wood, Christmas and silence in the snow, Christmas and Sherlock come to stand in the silence like the wild thing he is, was; there’s a gift in this somewhere, perhaps in the nervous, outstretched palms still brown-gold dappled as the sun that played in the leaves of summer oaks,  _their_ summer oaks, or maybe in the boughs of the dying, drying antlers wreathed with pine and holly (he still feels them under his hands, velvet wonders, soft as Sherlock was - is - sharp).

But John wants to shout  _why did you tame me_ , and  _doesn’t holly say keep away, keep away to your kind_ when he knows very well that Sherlock is a kind and kin of his own and they never leave, never leave, and above all  _the resurrection is Easter, you moron, you stupid daft bloody_  - but the only words he has in his throat, his only gift in and for a return: John whispers, “Come home.”


	6. apple red

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [formankind](http://formankind.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _DISNEY._

He holds it in his pale hands like a gift; death is red apple sweet and the Witchking of Death himself has already taken the bite.

The years spread through him like a poison. It takes a return, takes time, takes his Lionhearted Prince’s forgiveness bestowed like a kiss upon his brow for Sherlock to remember:  _so, too, does every fairytale have an ever after_ , and at last he wakes with a gasp.


	7. favor fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [wiggleofjudas](http://www.wiggleofjudas.tumblr.com)' prompt: _mollrene, in a cemetery, on a snowy night_.
> 
> Takes place in the [Don't Run Away](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1025871) universe, though it's not necessary to read that first. Note: warning for themes of violence, murder, gore, etc.

“Is that how you would do it?”

“Hmm?” Irene glances up from her phone, smirks. “Get rid of him? No, I think what our consulting killer needs is a stake through the heart he insists he doesn’t have. Silly boy,” she chides to no one in particular.

Molly grunts, and a bit more salt spills from the heavy bag. She pushes back her hood, flushed with heat. “And his partner?”

She’s busy sprinkling the grave, but she doesn’t have to see to know that there’s a grin, at once wicked and sad, curving over Irene’s red assassin’s lips. “Oh, I think that will do it.”

Molly almost winces. Irene still notices (always does).

Molly hears the silence behind her, the snow and the evening, sky gone a strange, pulsing blood-orange above their heads, just before Irene sweeps from her perch on the headstone and alights close and sudden at Molly’s back.

The warmth is as welcome as it is terrifying: in her white fur coat, Irene is the wolf with her smiling maw just as Molly’s ear, considering. “I meant that’s enough with the salt, pet.” Irene reaches around to curl over where Molly’s hands are clutching at the bag and, slowly, she levers it to the ground. It goes with a crunch in the frost, forgotten.

Molly looks away, sickened. One of Irene’s hands strokes back up, knuckles brushing her waist, the side of her neck. “Are you afraid I’d do it to you, pet?” Molly shudders, and it’s enough of an answer.

Irene laughs, and Molly feels the gentle pressure of Irene’s lips closing over her shoulder. Abruptly, she bites, hard. A shiver, different from the last, spine-deep and hot, spreads beneath Molly’s skin. “Fire for us both, my dear,” Irene says breathlessly. “The way witches used to go up in flames.”

Suddenly Molly’s hand reaches back, tangles itself viciously in Irene’s dark curls. She tugs her forward, whispers in her ear, “I’d rather see you frozen.”

The smile against her skin turns up further at the corners. Amused. “What? That cryogenic nonsense? The both of us live forever?”

Molly doesn’t answer, but she can’t deny: it’s a nice thought. Wake up in a hundred thousand years, the only two of them left alive. If she woke up first she could watch the color return to Irene’s pale cheeks. Yes, she thinks. That’d be nice.

Oh, they’d tear each other apart.

“’From what I’ve tasted of desire,’” Irene murmurs again, almost a laugh, and then, “Where’s your lighter, pet?”

Molly’s hands, stiff with cold, fumble in her pockets. It takes a few tries, but eventually a flame sparks, altogether too bright for the dark. They spend a few moments watching the flickering, seductive dance of it through the shadows.

Then Molly releases her hand. The lighter falls into the grave, and the bodies go up in a roar of light and smoke.


	8. the deeps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [rominatrix](http://www.rominatrix.tumblr.com)'s prompt: _retirementlock_.

He knows John is awake, which is why he takes a deep breath and asks, “How do I find you after?”

There’s silence for a moment, a moment in which Sherlock wonders if John is going to pretend, pretend that Sherlock doesn’t already know everything about him. The way he breathes in sleep. How badly he wants to avoid talking about this.

But he just sighs. The bed shifts, John turning on his side. Sherlock stays on his back, staring at the ceiling.

“Find me where? After what?” comes the tired voice.

“You believe in heaven.”

“You don’t.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Sherlock says honestly. He lifts one hand from the bed. It gestures through the air, pale floater through the dark, as Sherlock speaks. “If all good people have gone there, in all of history, it must be very crowded.”

“You don’t believe in heaven, but you believe there are that many good people in the world?” John sounds amused.

Sherlock frowns. “You don’t?” This is troublesome. He hastens to add, “By your definition of the word ‘good,’ not mine.” If heaven existed, and if it were entirely Sherlock’s, it would consist of the one person who deserved to be there, and that person was not Sherlock. Not in any sect or religion.

John sighs again. He does that a lot, these days. “It’s heaven. I don’t know how it works, it just does.”

“But how would I find you?” Sherlock presses. Doesn’t John understand that he  _needs_  to know?

“Sherlock,” John groans, and Sherlock can hear him rubbing at his face, the rustling of the sheets. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“But we need to.” The  _it’s important to you_  remains unspoken, because there are some things they don’t have to say anymore, not after so many years.

But now John is pushing back. “Why?” he demands, and the word seems to cut through the dark. Sherlock at last turns his head on the pillow, looking at John. He can just make out the shape of his face in the dark. The gleam of his eyes. They are hard, and just this side of desperate, like a wild animal peering at him out of the gloom.

“You know why –“

“Sherlock, no, I –“

“First I’ll just be tired, fatigued. Have to sit down more often. We’ll have to put a chair out by the hives.”

The warning is tinged with fear. “Sherlock.”

Sherlock keeps going. He has to, now, or he’ll never get it out. “About three months from now the seizures will start. Minor at first, they always are, gradually getting worse. The eyesight’s probably next, I’ll be unsufferable about that.”

John is shaking on the other side of the bed, but finally silent.

“Then the rest of the organ failure.” Sherlock can feel John’s gaze on the side of his face, as the shaking worsens. “Order depending, I have from six months to a year at best.”

“ _Sherlock_ ,” John chokes, sounding utterly broken.

He inhales, slow and deep. “It will be painful. I will be on constant medication and under constant supervision, and by the end I will probably be delirious. I won’t recognize anyone, including you. Including myself. I won’t recognize anything but the constant pain until it ends, which will probably be the choice you make to end it for me, and –“

“Stop, Sherlock,  _stop_ , please,” John is gasping, and before he can stop himself Sherlock turns over on his side and crushes John to himself. John’s arms clutch over his back, hands twisting in the thin fabric of his t-shirt, and when Sherlock’s arms come up to rest over his shoulders he feels them shaking, wracked with sobs. John makes a thin noise and burrows closer, his face pressed into Sherlock’s neck as he works to breathe, gripping so tightly Sherlock thinks he might leave bruises.

Quietly, Sherlock allows John Watson to come apart in his arms.

He holds him through the worst of it, fingers stroking over his spine, the skin he’s memorized thousands of times over. He memorizes it again, just this one last time.

Some long time later John begins to quiet, but the tremors don’t subside. They run through him like livewire no matter how Sherlock tries to chase them away.

He brushes his lips against John’s temple. Closes his eyes and breathes deep.

For a long while they’re quiet.

But he knows John is awake, which is why it doesn’t surprise him when John swallows, leaning slightly away.

“I’d find you anywhere,” he says at last, the words thick but steady. “And you always come back to me, remember?”

“Is that how it works?” Sherlock says, amusement and something fierce and desperate lodging in his throat, clenching in his chest.

He’s the one who pulls John back in as he whispers, “Remind me,” as Sherlock does, as he spins them a tale made of memories,  _remember?_ and  _always._  as he sends the both of them drifting off to sleep, into dreams that may be futures or nevers or long, long agos.

In one of these dreams, Sherlock is standing at the edge of the sea. The waves reach up the shore, lapping at his toes before drawing away, playful, considering. Taking their time. But the tide is coming in.

John’s hand in his. He looks over. Eyes blue as saltwater beneath the sun, smooth as sea-glass. “Together,” he says, and it sounds the way the ocean sounds as it meets the shore, the both of them coming together again, again, again.

Sherlock nods. They step forward. Make for the deeps.


	9. i love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [starrla89](http://starrla89.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _a re-imagining of the famous final scene from "When Harry Met Sally;" picturing John saying this to Sherlock; eeeeeee!!!!_

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking –“

“Remarkable,” Sherlock hums, not pausing in his inspection of the body as he drops to his knees.

John purses his lips. Resists the incredible urge to roll his eyes and strangle the man. Instead, softly, he says, “And I _love_ you, you git.”

Everyone on the crime scene freezes. John watches as the slender line of Sherlock’s back goes stiff. His hands, long fingers flared, are still hovering motionless in the air when he manages, “What?”

John quirks a smile. “I thought you hated repetition.”

“No, I mean,” and here Sherlock hesitates, palms wavering, “what do you expect me to say to… to that?”

“Well,” John says honestly, taking a moment to think about it. “How about you love me, too?”

Someone – Donovan, probably – makes a strangled noise. Sherlock just keeps staring at the corpse before him until slowly, interminably, he twists around, looking up at John with empty eyes. Sherlock keeps their gazes locked as he gets to his feet, and John is eventually staring up into that expressionless face, watching pupils shift in their silver sea as he listens to the thunder of his own pulse in his ears.

And then Sherlock is darting past him, making for the boundary of yellow tape and flashing lights. John barely manages to catch the sleeve of Sherlock’s coat before Sherlock is tearing it away from his grasp, tearing around to look at John, hurt blazing through his eyes while his mouth curls into a frowning snarl lit harsh and cruel beneath the shadows.

“I’m not sorry,” Sherlock spits. “Not about any of it. You’re still readjusting to civilian life, you’re  _lonely_ and  _purposeless_ , but you can’t just show up here  _while I’m working_ , tell me you love me and expect that it’ll make any difference to me at all. I don’t feel like that, John. I don’t work that way.”

“Oh?” John challenges. “Then how do you work?”

Sherlock is already shaking his head with a bitter smile. “Not the way you want me to.”

“I don’t want you any differently than you already are!” John bursts out, and suddenly he doesn’t care, _sod_ Lestrade and Donovan and Dimmock and even bloody Anderson; if Sherlock’s gotten so good at deliberately making John angry then John’s going to bloody well be angry, angry and in love and honest, right here and right now.

“I love that you faff off in that stupid coat even at noon in the middle of a summer heatwave in the city,” he begins. “I love that it takes you a week to remember to eat and that when you do you’ll just make me order a takeaway. I love that flickery thing your eyes do when you’re looking at me like I’m an idiot, or even sometimes like I’m someone worth looking at a second time. I love that after I spend a day with you I can still feel the adrenaline in my veins and I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night, even when you’re too busy thinking to listen. And that’s  _not_ because I’m lonely, or because I still feel like a soldier.”

John takes a deep breath. “I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

He is oddly aware of the silence in the wake of his words, of the way it’s like the world has stopped turning and the night has paused just for them in this one moment. He feels strangely breathless, like after one of their chases, his skin tingling and his mouth on fire. Mostly, he’s aware of the way Sherlock is staring at him – expressionless as he was before except for the eyes that stare at him, wide and unblinking, from where they’re set high above those wan cheeks.

John doesn’t allow his own eyes to waver. He does, though, give a little shrug, as if to say  _that is all I have left_ , and  _alright, Sherlock. Your turn._

Sherlock’s throat bobs. Finally, he speaks. “That is just like you,” he says, almost musingly. “No logic, no real argument, absolutely none whatsoever, and I should hate that.”

But now he’s looking at John’s eyes, his lips, glancing back up at his eyes again as something clear and warm unfurls behind his own.  _Ah. There it is_ , John thinks fondly, just as Sherlock steps forward and mutters, “But I don’t, I really don’t, I –“

And then Sherlock is kissing him, latex gloves smooth and hot on the sides of his face, where his long thumbs stroke beneath his eyes; for all the sharp things that tend to come out of it, Sherlock’s mouth is as endearingly soft as he remembers. So are the noises Sherlock makes high in his throat when John winds his arms around Sherlock’s waist and kisses back, nudging up into his face, sighing a smiled  _at last_ against his lips.

John is dimly aware of the uncertain smattering of applause around them. He draws away gradually, muttering, “You know, I never got why people did that. Just makes things awkward, really.”

Sherlock’s face is still close enough to his own that he can watch the color stripe over those cheekbones, turn his eyes mercury-bright. “I imagine it’s because they’re…” he trails off.

“Sherlock?” he prods after a time, and Sherlock’s eyes snap back to his own.

“Happy,” he says finally, with a tentative smile. “They’re happy.”

John’s chest aches with the tenderness he feels for this man. “Yeah,” he murmurs, and leans in for one last, quick peck. He feels Sherlock’s lips, upturned, stretch wider. John gives an inquisitive hum against Sherlock’s mouth, and Sherlock leans back. With a wicked glance to the side, he puts his lips to John’s ear.

“Or because Lestrade just won the Scotland Yard betting pool.”


	10. blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [thefiendishsparrow](http://thefiendishsparrow.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _Johnlock and red cheeks and cirrus clouds and the sun kissing the horizon._
> 
> Takes place within her [flower crown AU](http://thefiendishsparrow.tumblr.com/post/66842213598/sherlock-holmes-was-a-man-with-a-crown-of).

Over the hills the heath lies dormant in a melting dusk, city grey and still, deep green. Winter opens her bare-boned arms, exhales a season, breathes to her fatherless colors  _welcome in_  and  _welcome home_.

But Sherlock can feel it, the way their wreaths - holly, curling strands of ivy - tremble.

Almost plaintive, Sherlock touches John’s shoulder.

John wakes immediately. Blinks. Nods, just once.

In silence, they dress. John helps Sherlock into his boots and Sherlock buries his nose in John’s hair, inhales: tickling buds, still sleeping. Just scented of pearl.

Arms linked, they walk out over the Downs, puffing cold air from reddened cheeks. Sherlock’s steps are fragile, but quick. He takes them to the top of the hill, overlooking the sea.

And there, just in time: a sliver of sun, blue-green on the bay.

The solstice steals over Sussex soft and shy, but today will last longer, be warmer, for the first time in an age.

From the corner of his eye, Sherlock sights delicate white poking through at John’s temple: gardenia, unfurled.

_This one fixed point._

Sherlock used to bloom with balsam and laurel, rhododendron and larch. Once - he smiles - purple lilac. And now:

John turns. Presses kisses to pink convolvulus, honeysuckle, jasmine. A last to the undying one they’ve shared for years of sunrises unchanged: violet, faithful blue.


	11. whatever remains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [wiggleofjudas](http://wiggleofjudas.tumblr.com/)' prompt: _john retires to the woods and a wild fawnlock appears_ ; and [formankind](http://formankind.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _sleep_.
> 
> A universe where Sherlock takes a good deal longer to tell John he's alive, and comes back more than slightly changed...

_Spacious_ , the property agent had said. The door sags from its hinges at his touch.  _Quaint_. A cloud of yellow dust curls like a cat in the empty frame.  _Fixer-upper_. The sunlight slants through it, seems to blink at him suspiciously from its perch:  _well?_

 

 

Ella blinks at him from the curve of her chair, writes  _lonely_  and  _strange_  and  _needs fixing_  at him, upside-down, as if this will do the trick.  _Well?_  They seem to ask, blinking at each other.

_I’m moving_ _,_  he says at last.  _Retiring._

Her pen stutters across the page. Stops.

 

 

It’s autumn when he brings the last of the boxes through, a flock of leaves blowing in through the space behind him before the door swings shut. He sets them down, stretches. Looks at the dead brown leaves, the empty cobwebs in the corners, the silence. John looks a bit more, then shuffles into the kitchen and puts the kettle on.

 

 

He wakes sweating and stares at the ceiling for a long, long time, watching the moon chase into the sun, remembering how the same moon used to ride in the wake of a madman’s cloak, in the wake of his rooftop words saying  _where i go_ , while the other madman finished from the ground looking up: _i will follow_.

 

 

It’s so quiet.

After the war, after Sherlock, after Mary, after - the quiet never got used to him.

He’s being watched.

 

 

John hammers on new shutters, doesn’t miss the gaze resting heavy on his shoulders. That, or the fact this his nails keep disappearing when he’s looking the other way. It almost reminds him, almost.

 

 

In the middle of the night: a knock at the door. John peers through the crack, gun tucked into his waistband (old habits).

No one. But as he pulls the door wider, light spills onto the front porch, falling into the cavernous eye sockets of a dried out old raven’s skull resting loud and obtrusive on the stoop.

It fits quite nicely on the mantel. Old habits, even if they weren’t ever his.

 

 

_Haunted_ , John thinks, sipping his tea while the men drive out in their pickup trucks at dawn, while the men come back in the evening loaded with heavy carcasses strapped to their hoods,  _is not so different from hunted_. He folds his paper back to the next page, newsprint staining his skin.

For what seems the first time in an age, John wonders.

 

 

The birdsong sounds like Brahms, but only in the moments before he wakes.

 

 

_There’s a woodspirit here_ , says the woman at the farmer’s market, who presses a bag of cloying, sweet apples to his chest. John blinks at her.

_No_ _,_  she says. Presses harder.  _Here._

 

 

Once, in the dark, and if it was a dream John has had none better:

_Where are we going?_  murmured gently into the space between. How Sherlock’s eyes welled with starlight.

John, as Sherlock feathered flight patterns over his skin:  _To sleep_.

 

 

John wakes up. Blinks at the ceiling.

He crashes through the yellow carpet of leaves, breaking from the path.  _I know you’re there,_ he shouts, exhaling ghosts to the cold. Turns in a circle and lifts his face to the blue, just visible through the bare branches and bellows again,  _I know you’re there!_ The other not-question lies on his panting tongue, still dormant (it’s been so long, so bloody long, he’d almost forgotten):  _I know who you are._

 

 

Halfway through his small dinner of beans on toast, John laughs until he cries.

 

 

_Whatever remains._

John waits. Winter settles around him. John waits.

 

 

Sherlock finds him in the garden on his hands and knees, clearing away the bramble. Bulbs, he’d decided. For spring.

John looks up because it begins to snow, keeps looking because it’s finally time.

John breathes quietly. The lightly dappled flanks of the deer-man show he is doing the same, though you wouldn’t know it, John thinks. There’s not a sound to be heard, here at the edge of the forest, the meet of two worlds. They could say anything, anything at all.

Like,  _I have imagined this, hoped wept prayed for this, in a thousand different ways, and I never -_

like,  _even your imagination, John, is limited._

Or:  _but I apologize for all of them._

The snow continues to fall in fat, dry flakes.

Slowly, after an age, the creature seems to relax, though he’s as still as he ever was. The pale eyes he fastens on John have never been afraid, not even  _before_ , but this time cool, intelligent aloofness gives way to something bright, bright and still so soft. Familiar in the aching place, healed-over in John’s chest - Sherlock was forgiven years ago.

_Hail, steward_ _,_  John wants to call instead, at last,  _well-met._

But he chokes back the words with all the other questions that have ceased to matter, perhaps never mattered at all. He waits until Sherlock simply inclines his strange, antler-tipped head, still raven black but peppered with grey.

John smiles wide, forgets it might look like he’s baring his teeth. But Sherlock doesn’t startle. Doesn’t quite smile, either, but there’s something.

Something that seems to say with a soft-furred smirk:  _well?_

John laughs. Shakes his head helplessly, his hands so still and small. He continues to watch as his old, dear friend then turns and picks his silent way back into his woods, vanishing from sight. John knows they will not meet again.

He sighs. Looks up at the grey, grey sky for a bit. Resumes digging, this time with a song on his breath.

In the spring, there will be daffodils here. Maybe he will paint the house yellow in the new year, too. He is thinking of tearing down fences, and all the while the day is drawing down to another night, and his heart is beating whole and unbroken in his breast.

 

  
_Spacious_ , the property agent will declare.  _Charming_ _,_  even. And by the old man who lived out the rest of his days here,  _well-loved._


	12. remind, remember

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [i-am-the-walruss](http://i-am-the-walruss.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _one of them has short-term memory loss, like 50 First Dates._

_The first time I met him I didn’t notice. He’s careful like that, not just about what he remembers but about everything, meticulous and precise in a way you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a man who doesn’t seem to think twice before getting into cabs with serial killers. I’m glad of that, at least - we’re not exactly enemy-free, and can you imagine what kind of leverage…?_

_Well._

_I had at least expected him to tell me. Maybe we just weren’t close enough when I figured it out on my own, but living together was apparently close enough in its own way - it’s the calendars, the post-it notes scattered around the flat, the little scribbles I dig out of his trouser pockets before the wash._ (“NB pg. 5, Experiment in progress, DO NOT INGEST THE BREAD”) (“masking tape, flamethrower, blueberries”) (“John is good.”) _Things like that. Even how he was always awake before I was, never really sleeping until he absolutely had to._

_I am a doctor. And for all I might look it standing next to the prat, I’m not stupid._

_Finding out… didn’t change things as much as I thought they would, though. By the time I came along Sherlock had had a system in place for ages: there was the daily alarm on his phone, the DVD that explains everything about his condition and how he got here carefully placed at the foot of the bed every night and the message, “Watch first. - SH.” Some things even got easier - the blog helped him remember the details of cases, though he still criticizes me for being romantic about it. I’m able to refresh him when he needs it._

_Plus, y’know - he’s Sherlock._

_He can do anything._

_I just hope it’s nicer, now, not to have to do it so alone._

_Later, after we became… whatever it is we are, if I was awake before he was, and if I was very lucky (or unlucky, depending on how we’re feeling, I suppose) and watching very carefully, I’d see it happen._

_He opens those eyes of his and it’s like he’s ten years younger, which I guess, in that moment, he is. I don’t know. Sometimes he wakes up sad, sometimes he just sort of wakes up… nothing at all._

_And every time it’s a quicksilver arrow of surprise, every time you can see the iron curtain fall. Sometimes leaving Sherlock to his deductions fills the best moments of our lives, when he’s hot on the heels of a criminal and I’m flying after. But having to sit there and quietly let him reach his own conclusions, those ten or so seconds where the best man I know is vulnerable and alone, where I am helpless - those are some of the worst._

_But that’s probably me being selfish. I am, you know. Selfish. When, if anyone has the right to be selfish, it’s him and he never is. He’s loads of other things, arrogant and rude and annoying as hell, mostly, but never selfish. I try not to be. I’m learning._

_Once we were leaving a crime scene, brutal love-gone-wrong, I’ll never forget, and Sherlock pulled us around the corner, rough up against the brickface, and the mouth that had been an ugly slash across his troubled face all morning took mine, dark, desperate sips. And he said, “Isn’t it enough for you?”_

_For the life of me, I didn’t know what he was talking about, only that it had shaken him to his bones. “What?”_

_His eyes were very deep, and very sad. “That I fall in love with you again every day?”_

_Of course it is. Of course it is. You are not less, but so much more._

_I hope he knows that. I do tell him. It’s a privilege to know the man with such a brilliant, damnable brain, that it can be his gift one moment and his curse the next, but it’s a privilege because of the_ man _, not the brain. I don’t know anyone who can do what he does. I don’t know anyone like him at all._

_We manage, same as anyone else, just a little differently. Probably a little bit better, actually._

_...I won’t say it’s not hard, for either of us. And before I know I said waking him up is difficult, but then -_ _God._

_But then there are the nights._

_Sometimes we’ve put off sleep for days and it’s the kind of thing we can’t deny anymore. The flat is always so silent and so still when we get home, hang up our coats. The air between us is always heavy. Sometimes, there in the sitting room, he just presses our foreheads together and we breathe and breathe._

_And then, quietly and together, we go to bed:_

_He peels out of his clothes, shrugs me out of mine like it’s a ritual, like it’s an art, like he’s memorizing every single thing about me. Like we’ve been faithful lovers for years and he already knows it all._

(“He loves you very much.”)

_And we lie down, him and I, side by side. We lie down, curled up close, and if I’m listening very carefully and I’m very, very lucky I’ll hear his heart beating as he says, “Remind me. You have to remind me.” And into the breath between us I whisper about the stupid thing he did last week, or about his brother’s birthday party, when he was so sloshed he almost unraveled Great Britain. The dignity of several of Her leaders, at least, to which he always waves a hand and says that he wouldn’t have remembered it anyway. Though he always smirks as he says it, so._

_Mostly I tell him that he’s brilliant. Mostly I tell him that tomorrow there will be a new case, and he’s going to save someone the way he saved me. Mostly I tell him that I love him, just to make sure he goes to sleep smiling, just to make sure he goes to sleep knowing it._

_Just to make sure that, when his breath has evened out and we are the both of us drifting through that silent in-between, he isn’t dreaming of tomorrow._

(“You do, too.”)

_His words, “Isn’t it enough for you, that I fall in love with you again every day?” For him and me, that’s enough._

_More often, surprisingly: I am the one who forgets._

_He never does._

_ And for all the other times, the cases and the breakfasts and the bickering  - I’ll do the remembering for the both of us. _

_\- JHW_


	13. back, blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [wiggle-of-judas](http://wiggle-of-judas.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _retirementlock - bone, aeroplane, translucent_

They aren’t yours, but you were his, so when she’s grown and he’s gone she brings them to you: the only black you allow is the dirt on Ewan’s hands - he won’t remember you as anything more than the old man with the inkstained hands, kneeling beside him in the dirt, and if he remembers the things you teach him ( _Lumbricus terrestris_ , shallow-buried pink) he will not remember you.

Nor a grandfather ghost.

But Jean is older, she knows, her eyes are his and you won’t see them twice-dimmed. So when she climbs into your lap, asks for a story, you don’t say _he told the stories_ but _Which one?_

_The East Wind._

You consider.

_Took me off in a plane, once. Brought me right home again_.

Jean looks at you the way he used to. _Does it always bring things back?_

*

 

That night, the violin and the sea through the windows: their mother looks at you like she can see right through you - from _there_ , the bones by the hives, to _here_ , where he’s heavy in yours. You ache.

_Tell me -_

_A story?_

_A truth: that you know. How he…_

_How about a lie?_

She nods.

_The ghosts of our old loves are the worst._

The music, your smile, the lonely and the sea - all of you fading to blue.


	14. star storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [sassyveedub](http://sassyveedub.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _Sherlock and John investigate a haunted boat_ ; and [formankind](http://formankind.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _star!john_

_On the third day, the storm blows in._

 

*

 

The newspaper says  _Maritime Mystery_ , Sherlock breathes  _John_ , and before long they’re on the case.  _Lone Star_  has changed captains more than most, and her current owner doesn’t dare set foot on the sloop.

 

“She’s bathed more in blood than in saltwater, mind,” she says, shoulders browned and hunched uneasily beneath the heavy sun.

 

John squints back at her. “So, they go out to sea -”

 

“Boat comes back in three days later. By  _herself_.”

 

“How many times?”

 

“Four owners. Victims.”

 

“Six.” John turns at the sound of Sherlock’s voice. “Six victims.” Sherlock grins, all brilliant white teeth. “Well, first mate. Anchors aweigh?”

 

*

 

At first, it’s boring. Chasing superstition’s more like a stakeout.

 

“Why pirates?” Sunning himself on the deck, John looks back up where Sherlock’s moodily poking at his phone in the shade. He’s at least superstitious enough to believe there’s a signal here somewhere.

 

Sherlock shifts guiltily. “They’re… cool.”

 

John laughs.

 

*

 

On the first night, all the instruments fail.

 

*

 

Sherlock positively glows until he can’t find an explanation among the electrics or the fuel, the meters and motors. Then his mouth twists, his eyes dim, quietly he says:

 

“Leave me alone, John. I… need to think.”

 

For the first time, John worries.

 

When John finds him again, he’s sitting there in the dark, pale as a lighthouse with his empty hands.

 

*

 

They wake up on the second day with no idea where they are.

 

All around them: the fathomless, perfect blue.

 

*

 

“You mean we’re -”

 

“Lost, yes.”

 

“But the maps -”

 

“Useless.”

 

“Our charts were -”

 

“Completely useless.”

 

“Sherlock!” Sherlock looks at him. His hair hasn’t been washed, and he’s raked his fingers through it so many times it’s exploded over his forehead, but it’s just short enough that John can see his eyes, wide, luminous, through the curls.

 

He’s frightened. John is, too. He doesn’t tell Sherlock that he woke up drowning from dreams of the deep and the dark. He swallows, and he says, “Tell me you can solve this.”

 

*

 

They sit together, side by side, the highest point of the ship.

 

The sound of the ocean is steady, sirenic. John fancies their voices have the rumble of currents, trading stories over sea. Some things that will always be carried on. Some things that will never be lost.

 

“Just the one star out tonight,” John sighs eventually.

 

Sherlock wrinkles his nose, like just saying it costs him something: “We don’t even know if it’s a real star.”

 

“Looks like a star to me.”

 

Sherlock stops. Is silent. Even the seabirds haven’t followed them here.

 

“Ours.” The confession whispered to wing on the wind, as if it won’t die here with them. “Our star.”

 

Salt-wet on his face when John leans in. “Straight on till morning.”

 

On the horizon the gathering clouds.

 

*

 

Their eyes closed, John murmurs, “Make a wish.” Something in his chest burns hot and bright.

 

*

  
On the third night, the ship sails back, trail of stars in her wake.


	15. just drive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [formankind](http://formankind.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _greaserlock_

The day John’s parents kick him out Sherlock’s there, idling at the end of the drive. John comes out with his pack over his shoulder and his boots laced tight and Sherlock says nothing at all, just leans against his bike and takes long, slow sips from a cigarette while his eyes burn into John’s.

John shoulders past, tossing his bag over the back and starting to tie it down. After a few moments John hears the crunch of gravel as Sherlock shifts, drops the cig and crushes it underfoot before he moves to help with the straps. John risks a glance - across from him, dawn’s picking out the greasy umber flare in those slicked-back curls, and underneath the ratty t-shirt the whole lean length of him flexes as Sherlock bends, straightens, comes to regard him silently once more.

John doesn’t miss the tension at the corner of his mouth when Sherlock finally releases his gaze. John swallows.

“You’re worth it.”

Sherlock’s fingers, too casual where they splay over The Skull’s chrome handlebars, clench. “Don’t -”

“You are,” he says firmly. John swings his leg over the bike, dropping down hard and closing his eyes. He waves a feeble hand. “Now can we just…?”

After a long moment of silence, he feels Sherlock settling in front of him, hears the bike ratcheting higher, all sibilance and smoke. Eyes still shut tight, he winds his arms around the thin waist in front of him and pushes his nose to the sloping rise of neck and shoulder. “Just drive,” he murmurs, exhausted, into expensive leather, scent of earth and sweat and salt.

“What are we going to do?”

John almost misses it under the engine’s rumbling. He wishes he had.

“I don’t know.” He sighs. “Aren’t you supposed to have all the answers anyway, wonder man?” John says, and it’s almost bickering, it almost sounds like okay sounds.

But Sherlock’s shaking his head, too serious. “Not for this.”

“You’ll figure it out. Always do.”

Sherlock’s quiet. Then he asks, “Where are we going?”

John sighs again. “Hell, apparently.”

That earns him a snort, at least. John smiles weakly and drops his head back down. “I don’t know, I don’t care.” The honesty shakes in his voice. “I’m with you, that’s what matters, alright? Jesus. So just…you choose, anywhere, please just - for me?”

Where his hands are curled beneath Sherlock’s jacket, John feels his breath hitch in his belly. Then he laughs lowly, and something in John relaxes just as Sherlock rolls his shoulders back into his chest and murmurs, “Could be dangerous.”

For the first time in days, John smiles, masking it at Sherlock’s nape where he knows Sherlock will feel it.

Together, they lean left. Sherlock throws back the kickstand, John’s arms tighten, and they start down the old suburban road, the town fading behind them to a speck of pale blue nothing in distance and time. Their dust clings to the air before it, too, disappears in a shaft of sun.


	16. bon appétit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [hasmoneans](http://hasmoneans.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _something with Sherlock cooking Joan a Big Fancy Dinner - but not romantically, as bros! Detective bros._

Mycroft was always the culinary genius. Their grandmother, French, had placed great importance on fine cuisine, and Mycroft had placed a great importance on her. Sherlock was partial to thinking she’d always liked him best anyway, failings with food or no, but she’d done her best to teach and love them equally - Sherlock still remembers jostling his brother for room at the sink while she’d rinsed, dried, diced tomatoes, the knife glinting in the low kitchen light like something dangerous and lovely, a rare predator purring only under her knowing touch.

He thumbs through a cookbook now and her words come back to him as if scrawled there on the page: _cooking for the people you love, mon chéri, is the baring of your affection_ , she’d say, running dry fingers through his hair,  _it is the only thing that says, “I want you to be.”_

Mycroft was the culinary genius, but there’s no reason he can’t cook a simple dinner.

Joan sits and nods and smiles through three courses, but apparently filet mignon is the final straw - upon seeing it she tosses her napkin down on the table and sinks into her hands with a sigh.

“Elbows!” he hears himself protest, but she throws one of her better glares his way and, chastened, he snaps his mouth shut and waits.

“What’s all this about, Sherlock?”

Anxiety twists in his gut, in his hands. “Did you not like it?”

“The food is fine,” she sighs, and, gesturing feebly, “better than fine, just - why?”

He fidgets. “Must I have a reason?”

“You always do.”

“No.” The resultant staring contest doesn’t go well for him, and at last he relents. He runs to the worktop, seizes the dessert tray, and sets it down in front of Joan. A second later he grabs the candle he’d stashed in the cupboard and, stabbing it into the center, says, “There.”

He gives a little gesture for emphasis.

He frowns - she’s still frowning. “Baklava?”

“I used our honey, the bees’ honey,” he explains.

“And the candle is -”

“Beeswax,” he nods. And then, taking a deep breath, adds, “It has been two years since we officially became partners, and, I thought…” Strange, he needs another breath. “I thought that, given the effort you have invested in us, and the work that we do, I would do some work for you.”

His partner looks as if she’s about to say something, so he says it quickly, has to get it out: “Bees, you know. Workers make food for the queen. The metaphor is imperfect,” he says in a rush, “I am not female, nor did I secrete anything on any of tonight’s meal, but -”

“Sherlock,” she finally interrupts, but the word is soft, her eyes warm and her hand warmer still when it takes his and squeezes softly, and it’s a relief sweet as honey bursting on the tongue when she finally understands, finally says what he means:  _“Thank you.”_

_Thank you for being, and being with me._


	17. back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [pyromancing](http://pyromancing.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _I have a hankering for John ending up nearly-drowned in the Thames and Sherlock searching in the water for him. After finding a very blue (but alive) Watson, Sherlock kind of confesses some feelings and gets very physically close to keep him warm. : >_

John’s breathing in blue, basking in watery waves of cerulean suns -

 _Tell me_ , hisses the river-thing with Sherlock’s voice, scales shimmering silver-spined, impatient (familiar), teeth too sharp and bright, the dark iridescence of the deep,  _what tales dead men dare not speak._

He blinks long and slow. It’s strange, ebb-flow of thought and being, wonderful and strange; there’s no sound, no sensation, just this, the blue and the between -

“John!”

 _Was always your job_ , John slurs on a string of bubbles. He watches them burst one by one, words he could never quite grasp.

But there, behind the shimmer of the surface: the shadow. The siren.

He screams, or tries - he knows that the sea holds such terrible things, pirate and predator, he knows that the sea holds such _life_. He has swallowed the sea and never once been swallowed whole.

He has befriended an ocean. These are the deeps.

_Don’t make it yours._

Arms wrapping him tight.

John struggles, chokes, surfaces with a gasp.

*

Midafternoon. Hospital. Hospital  _bed_. Sherlock tucked up close beside him.

He blinks, long and slow.

“John?” Sherlock’s holding shallow breaths for them both.

John lets them out with the tide:  _I am afraid of drowning but I am not afraid of you_.

What he says is: “Bloody octopus,” and anchors his arms tight around Sherlock’s back.


	18. figure eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [wiggle-of-judas](http://wiggle-of-judas.tumblr.com/)'s prompt: _retirementlock: dancing: any 'verse you'd like._

_Dusk - John finds him watching the hives, and with lips to his hair, lost murmurs about bad eyes, gives him a tug until they’re standing face to face. Sherlock trembles as John twines their fingers together, and for eight slow circuits of the garden he says nothing, until:_

It’s not a language, but it’s the only one they know.

Hmm?

The bees.

_John is quiet; he has learned to listen for the steady hum that drives like a pulse through the heart of every word and he doesn’t need to ask, doesn’t need to at all, but he tightens his grip and breathes,_ What do they say?

_With his face at the cradle of John’s shoulder, he murmurs,_ Follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [waggle dance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance)   
> [tremble dance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tremble_dance)   
> ["honeybee," for human dancing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojYK6CW8gdw)


End file.
